Sorrow
by Aya-DeWinter
Summary: *Written for the Quidditch competition* Its a short story focusing on Susan Bones in the aftermath of her aunt's death.


A/N:

Written for **The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition**

Prompts are:

(word) glitter

(quote) "Every family has bad memories" Mario Puzo

(word) singalong

*I also use a quote from "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien, its on page 163 of the version I have.

"Everyone thinks my aunt is SO great! Well she isn't! Just because she was supposedly killed by a death eater and "fought bravely" " I made air quotes with my fingers, as I screamed into the wind. "As soon as you die everyone forgets who that you were real, a real person who had bad habits, who laughed and who joined in every drunken singalong at Christmas. Now all those...mourner's remember is her work at the Wizamagot. NOBODY CARES!" I had gone up to the hills behind the house to get away. Get away from all those mourners, especially those from the ministry. They didn't see a lot of her caring side, I did. She didn't have a lot of time for personal life since work took up a lot of her time. Though she never did miss a birthday. Before I came up here I changed out of my black clothes and into something else. Aunt Amelia always hated black, it made her too sad. Last birthday she bought me a T-shirt. Its my favourite T-shirt, I've worn it that much the glitter has washed away.

Whilst I was deep in thought, a familiar hand reached out and touched me on the shoulder. I jumped out of my skin. I really wasn't supposed to be here alone and I wasn't expecting someone.

"Your mother is making herself sick with worry, I know the official line is that she was targeted by somebody else but we both know the truth. She was worried that death eaters had got you." She must have been worried to send him out to look for me.

"I just needed the space from...all...that." I just gestured in the direction of the house. Dad just nodded, he understood. He just lost his sister. Mum and I were all he had now.

"...Just don't be out here too long, I don't want anything to happened to you." I nodded and hugged him, trying to reassure him.

I lingered there for a little bit longer before I went back home. Mum was all over me from the moment I stepped in the door. Fussing and worrying about me, she was never like this until my aunt died. Then I had to be patient and listen to her tell me off for 'wandering off' and reassure her again, that I will be fine. That's the problem, I don't even know if I will be. My aunt was murdered for being unbiased and excellent at her job. There has been too many deaths in my family thanks to the death eaters and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. With that depressing thought I went up to my room and watched out the window as all the mourner's left to go back to their own lives and their living families.

Over the next few days the number of mourners and visitors dwindled. Which was good because I wasn't allowed to leave the house alone and I was getting fed up of them. I wasn't even allowed to greet and be polite and then go back to my room while the "grown ups" talked. Nope, I had to sit through the same inane chatter, that very rarely varied. It was all "So sorry about your loss, Amelia was an excellent/fantastic/kind/unbiased person who was dedicated to/great/amazing at her job." Then they would recall a story about the time she did this or that.

When there wasn't any visitors - which was fantastic - I was in my room going over the spells I had learnt in the DA last year. I had decided that my family tree was down to a branch and that it was going remain a branch not a couple of twigs. I had also decided that I was next on You-Know-Who's list, well at least the next Bones, because of my contact with Harry and joining the DA. I needed to protect myself. I wasn't going down without a fight – like my aunt.

So I had found an old toy wand at the back of the cupboard and was using that to practice. I would go through the motions of the spell and when (if I had been using a real wand) the spell should've come out, a few faint pink sparks would sputter out the end. I had been practising stunning when my dad came into my room.

"What are you doing Susan?" He asked with a weird look on his face. I guess I must have looked ridiculous holding the tiny toy wand, but I was practising for life or death situations and I guess you don't always look cool in those.

"Practising spells, what does it look like?" I didn't want to let him know that I was practising defensive spells. He looked at me for a moment.

"Which ones?" I was busted.

"At the moment, stunning..." I hurried to add, "Its only so I can defend myself if the death eaters come for me like aunt Amelia, I want to go down fighting but I'd prefer not to die." That's it, the tears came streaming down. "I don't want anyone else in this family to die."

"I'd like that too, for nobody else in this family to die. Its just you, mum and me kiddo, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has taken enough family members." He gave me a hug and then handed me a book. " Started cleaning out Amelia's flat today, I did two hours before I had to stop." He smiled sadly at me. "Found this in her wardrobe, its for you. Your birthday present. Read the inscription. He left.

I sat on the bed, holding this book. It had one of those artsy muggle photo covers, an extreme close up of a flower, with the title across the top saying "1001 sayings and quotes". I slowly opened the front cover to read the inscription.

"Dear Susan,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPPET!

I know its another birthday with another muggle book,

but since I can't always be there for you at Hogwarts, I

thought you could play our game and get some advice

from muggles. Even though they don't know our world,

the advice and wisdom wont go astray. Especially now

the darkness is taking over.

Love your most amazing aunt,

Amelia

The waterworks started again. She had always been a fun person to me and always called me poppet even when I had asked her a thousand times not to call me it. Things must have been bad if she had bought me a serious book. She must have known something we didn't. I decided to play the game she mentioned to cheer myself up a bit. What we used to do, and it never failed to send us rolling around laughing, is you get a book. Doesn't really matter what book but we always used novels because if you took the first line of dialogue (or just the first line) and that was something relevant to you. So sometimes you got yes/yep/ok/nope/no or you got "I am like a burglar that can't get away, but must go on miserably burgling the same house day after day."* So I opened the book and looked on the right hand page at the top … and the quote … was seriously never more fitting.

"Every family has bad memories." Mario Puzo. He would never know me, or my situation but that was the truth. Only thing is my family has more bad memories than some out there because of a certain You-Know-Who.


End file.
